A collection of musically themed musings by Brendan Bush in Burlington, VT

There is a lot of good music over the next couple of weeks in this area, and I wanted to bring some of it to your attention (though you can always check for good upcoming shows in Burlington and Montreal using the calendar to the right). You can listen to any of the bands using the links below. I highly recommend any and all of these shows, and will be making it to several myself.

Wolf Parade plays two shows at Le National (my favorite Montreal venue) this week – Thursday and Friday night. If you’re going, expect to be pleased with the material off of their new album Expo 86. I forgot just how good these guys are between all the good-but-not-great releases from the other several bands that front man Spencer Krug also leads (Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, Sunset Rubdown amongst others).

Phantogram, who played the Monkey House over the winter, plays Saturday night at Casa del Popolo. I think it was Phantogram who I saw described in a review as what The xx would sound like if they stopped talking about sex and started having it (sorry I don’t have a link to the original article).

Passion Pit, the Boston-based electronic outfit with a reputation of putting on amazingly fun shows, will be at Le National on Monday.

And rounding out the list is Au Revoir Simone next Friday at La Sala Rossa. I’m disappointed to be missing this one, as a college acquaintance of mine, Erika Forster, is 1/3 of the band and I’d love to see her play.

I’m still trying to navigate my way through the ins and outs of copyrights, etc., so I’m starting this series of posts with a band who has the mp3 I’m embedding available for free on their own website.

Anyhow, I listen to a lot of music — perhaps too much. Some albums I listen to only two or three times before putting them into the b-list that exists in my head. Others I’ll listen to obsessively until feeling some burnout. And others I’ll put on about once a week for an extended length of time.

It’s that last category of albums that I want to draw some extra attention to, in the hopes that you’ll give them a listen if you haven’t.

Today’s example is “Magic Chairs” by Efterklang. An mp3 of “Modern Drift,” the first song on the album, is embedded below for your listening pleasure.

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Magic Chairs is full of wonderful vocal melodies and a lush mixture of orchestral and electronic sounds. From the jubilant “Modern Drift” to the synth-driven pop of “Scandanavian Love” to the breathy whispers of “Natural Tune,” Magic Chairs floats around in an ethereal realm all its own. It’s simply beautiful music performed by an impressive array of Danish pop-rockers.

I was able to see Efterklang at La Sala Rossa in Montreal last month, and their performance was as flawless as their latest album.